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One way to truly remember what you learn from the books you’re reading and the movies you’re watching about Black History is to take notes. Your detailed and organized notes can be a resource for moving forward as you incorporate Black voices and ideas into your day-to-day life.
Also, take time to listen and learn even further from these TED Talks. What are TED Talks? Well, for starters, as their website explains, TED is “a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less)” and “to make great ideas accessible and spark conversation” (TED About Page).
TED Talks are great educational resources to learn more about Black History and Black Culture, as the TED Talk speakers share their educated, often research-based, and genuine personal experiences. Here are a few of my favorite TED Talks that helped me learn about Black history and the modern marginalized experiences that Black people in America experience. I highly encourage you to watch them, too.
CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE. The danger of a single story.
(2009. Oxford, England).
Chimamanda Adichie: you may recognize her name. She is the author of Americanah, Half of a Yellow Sun, and We Should All Be Feminists, to name a few. In her most famous TED video, Chimamanda talks about the dangers of only reading about history from one perspective: the Westernized perspective. If we do not change our history books’ narratives, most of which neglect the value of including Black voices, then that is a dangerous way to teach our children about American history and Black history. She shares how, despite her love for American and British children’s books, stories with characters that represented her as a Black woman “saved [her] from having a single story of what books are” and taught her, as she says, “that people like [her] could exist in literature” (Adichie). She says, “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete, they make one story become the only story” (Adichie). Chimamanda warns that teaching our children only one side of the story doesn’t allow them to understand that there is another side (or more) to that story–limiting the number of resources to learn from. Chimamanda shares her own experiences with falling for the single-story and how to learn from that experience.
BRYAN STEVENSON. We need to talk about an injustice.
(2012. Long Beach, California.)
If you’ve heard about Bryan Stevenson’s memoir Just Mercy (which later turned into a movie starring Michael B. Jordan), you’ll already know what he talks about in this TED video. I had the honor of hearing Bryan Stevenson speak at the Student Diversity and Leadership Conference during my Senior Year of High School in Atlanta, Georgia (one of the four places at the heart of the Civil Rights movement). Bryan Stevenson talks about identity relative to America’s incarceration system, specifically for low-income communities and communities of color. He says, “The United States now [in even back in 2012] has the highest rate of incarceration in the world” (Stevenson) and that “this country treats you much better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent” (Stevenson). Unless you’ve also watched 13th (documentary on Netflix), you’ve probably heard the fact that many states “disenfranchise you if you have a criminal conviction” (Stevenson). Most often, people of color are affected most negatively as a consequence. Stevenson takes his experiences as a lawyer, a social justice activist, and the Equal Justice Initiative founder to show us how racial identities shape this country. He encourages us to pay more attention to the marginalized experience of Black people in America to gain a more extensive range of perspectives that we can share with future generations.
ISABEL WILKERSON. The Great Migration and the power of a single decision.
(2017. New Orleans, Louisiana)
Isabel Wilkerson, a journalist and author of Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents (2020), speaks about the Great Migration (between the first World War and the 1970s). As she explains, during the Great Migration, six million African Americans moved (migrated) to the North and West from the Jim Crow South, risking nearly everything searching for freedom. She says the Great Migration “was the first time in American history that American citizens had to flee the land of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens they had always been….seeking asylum in their own country” (Wilkerson). Throughout the TED Talk, Isabel reminds us how influential Black culture and Black history has been on America. Most importantly, Black history is American history.
TITUS KAPHAR. Can art amend history?
(2017. Vancouver, BC.)
Titus Kaphar, an artist, specializing in sculpture and paintings with the mission to combine history’s adversities with the present-day advances in racial dynamics in this country, talks about how art influences how children learn about Black history and African American history. Not only does he discuss art’s impact on children’s education, but he demonstrates how art can teach us more than we realize about Black history in America. He says that art has should not be erased. Otherwise, there is nothing from which to learn. Instead, artists should change (amend) how they portray Black people and Black people’s history by including and amplifying Black people’s voices. In turn, our “most vulnerable minds” (Kaphar)–future generations–will learn history through art in a more progressive and inclusive way than ever before.
T. MORGAN DIXON & VANESSA GARRISON. The most powerful woman you’ve never heard of.
(2018. Vancouver, BC.)
T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa Garrison (co-founders of GirlTrek, the largest organization for Black women in the United States) share the influence of Septima Clark’s on women in the civil rights movement as well as women today. Dixon and Garrison talk about the power that women gain by incorporating reading and moving their bodies in their daily routines. Have you heard of Septima Clark? If you said no (just as I did before watching this TED video): the fact that so many people have not heard about Septima Clark epitomizes intersectionality and the under-representation of women, Black people, and therefore, Black women in our history books. If you said no, you also don’t know that she was named “the architect of the civil rights movement” by Dr. King himself. As told by Dixon and Garrison, Clark would teach women “the practical skills to go back into their community and teach people to read. Because if they could read, then they could vote,” and these people would become some of the most influential activists that we know today. Septima Clark was Rosa Park’s teacher. Dixon and Garrison share GirlTrek’s mission to help Black women “establish a life-saving habit of walking; in doing so, ignite a radical movement in which Black women reverse the devastating impacts of chronic disease, reclaim the streets of their neighborhoods, create a new culture of health for their families, and stand on the front lines of justice” (Garrison). Dixon and Garrison continue to guide their audience through the impacts of empowering Black women and how empowerment can happen by motivating people to move every day, both physically and with social justice.
I genuinely hope you take this article and turn off TikTok/Instagram stories/Snapchat stories and hear what these TED Speakers have to share with us and learn about Black History. Don’t stop watching TED videos after these five recommendations; these TED videos can be found on the TED website here, along with a list of other videos to watch to learn more about Black History!
What are your TED recommendations for learning about Black History and Black Culture? Let us know by connecting with us!